A Japanese city on Tuesday reopened a busy street that collapsed into a giant sinkhole, with the efforts of workers who toiled around the clock for a week drawing praise on social media.

The gigantic sinkhole, measuring around 30 metres (98 feet) wide and 15 metres deep, appeared last Tuesday in a bustling business district in the southwestern city of Fukuoka, swallowing part of a five-lane street.

Japanese workers toiled continuously for a week, dumping huge amounts of wet cement and sand into the gaping hole and fixing electricity, gas and water lines that had stopped following the accident.